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I always groan and shake my head when I read stuff like this.
People seriously think that Americans live in total isolation from the people around them? If that was the case then how come American has a society and cities filled with millions of peoole rather than just a collection of tribes and family compounds?
My fiance told me, matter of factly, that American society was like this a few months ago (she is chinese), and it took a couple hours of me reminding her that I lived in the US for 30 years and all the stories of my life there that i'd told her before she finally capitulated that maybe it wasn't the case. It seems it's something that people in Asia and to a lesser extent Europe believe, as though Americans a) all live in suburbs, and b) can all be classified in a taxonomic sense.
Of course everything is relative. We are not talking about things in an absolute way.
Also we are not talking about small towns.
but the American definition of high standard of living is nothing but just a large house in the middle of nowhere. Is that really "high standard" living when you need to drive 10-30 minutes to do everything, including trivial things like catch a movie or buy some cigarettes?
Do the 17 year old kids think it is a high standard of living when they are so far from everything and doing any fun involved a car ride from the parents? How do they meet their friends? taking the bus which comes on the hour?
The so called high standard of living is mostly associated with big houses with all the unnecessary space one think he needs just because everyone else does. It is not that high after all.
In Japan, people may live in small apartments, but you can't call that life not high standard when everything is at your doorstep.
dude, what you described as the "american definition of high standard of living" applies more to 50 year old republicans than it does to gen-x or millennial aged Americans...
many millions of Americans live in urban centers where you can walk to all of this stuff, and many if not most young Americans aspire to this lifestyle and aren't concerned with large houses and yards. I know that when I lived in SF, Boston, LA, Oakland, and Seattle, I could walk to 24 hour convenience stores in less than ten minutes, and in all of them except Seattle I could walk to 24 hour supermarkets and reataurants in about the same... let's not overgeneralize?
The car centric aspect of American lifestyle just seems very foreign to a lot of people. when you were born and raised in it, its really not that big of a deal to just drive to the grocery store or to your friends house. yes it is annoying when your car does break down, but its mostly a rare event to most people, especially if you own a Toyota or a Honda
You can also take those cars into big cities if you want to do big city stuff as well!
Of course everything is relative. We are not talking about things in an absolute way.
Also we are not talking about small towns.
but the culture you are describing sounds like a small american town, not an urban center, or even most suburbs. It's like using a suburb of Changsha or Wakayama to describe Chinese or Japanese society.
I have a female Taiwanese friend who turned down a job offer in Japan precisely because she did not want to make coffee for all her male department coworkers in the morning, which is a cultural expectation in Japan.
Unfortunately, that's the mindset of most people that are attracted to Japan. I blame the anime and video games. Most Western immigrants to China and Korea are usually older. The Japan obsession starts as young as 13 in many cases. I don't want to bash the OP, but he comes off to me as someone who is in his early 20s, and his main primary reason for going to Japan is rooted in anime and stereotypes of Japanese girls (his repeated posts of I want a Japanese waifu!).
It's funny that the East and West have totally different stereotypes towards the Japanese. For me, the first thing that came to mind is that Japanese ojisan's work their ass off day in and day out and are into weird sexual ****
That usually comes before the cleanliness and the politeness and the xenophobia etc etc. Maybe that says something about me
It's hard to fault them, when Japanese media entered their lives at an extremely early age, before they really knew what they were being exposed to. Maybe older generations sought out Japanese products in their later years, but for Millennials (and late-Xers like me), it's one of the first things they watched on TV. I never really caught on to anime, but the video games did get to me.
Yeah, I'd be lying if I said I never watched Japanese cartoons as a kid (I was born in '83 at a time when plenty of Japanese cartoons were on the air... Transformers, Voltron, Maya the Bee, etc). At that time, lots of American companies outsourced animation to Japan, so even shows like GI Joe had an "anime" look to them. My family also would pick through the discount bins or specials sections at video stores and pick up lots of weird, one-off cartoons from Japan that were haphazardly translated and often had their stories changed around for American audiences.
I had a Genesis and later, an SNES... same deal, I played lots of Japanese-made games. We were pretty broke so a lot of what I got were, similarly, translated, lesser titles from Japan that we picked up for cheap after blockbuster was done with them.
In addition to this, my grandpa who fought in WW2 and Korea had an affinity and reverence for Asian culture after his time there; he always spoke of them respectfully, and regaled me with stories of the culture and his travels there, more than of the wars he fought. I had tons of Asian and Asian American friends as a lad; I was interested in their cultures, and they and their families were quite welcoming towards my interest. All this fostered a sense of familiarity and comfortability with Asian cultures that has culminated in my relocating permanently to Asia and marrying a local woman.
As I got further into my teens, my interest in cartoons of all sorts dropped off. I do artwork and music, and I spent more time creating than consuming. I like Asian musical scales and song structure, but am a hard rocker/metalhead. My friends who continued on with their fandom and their desire to "move to japan" seemed lamer and more disconnected as time went on, holding onto this cartoon-fueled fantasy while I actually learned languages and delved into the rest of Japanese, and then Chinese and Korean and Vietnamese, culture.
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After living there for a while, I've grown to appreciate the country as another 1st world society, with different values (and different, although not always necessarily better, ways to "screw in a lightbulb") than Western 1st world counterparts.
And that's what so many Japanophiles aren't really able to do. I've seen some of my most obsessed friends come away from their time in Japan totally dejected, and somewhat lost, because it turned out that the dream life that helped push them through their boring, isolated North American suburban upbringing was indeed just a dream. Their whole plan was to move there permanently and live in paradise, and now that they know otherwise, they have nothing. The day-to-day grind of working to support yourself isn't hugely different from one developed nation to the next, and it isn't depected as much in popular media because it's freakin' boring.
People who obsess over anime and let it form their view of Japan (or, more broadly, asia) are like people who form their opinions of America based on its blockbuster movies. It's entertainment, and people turn to it for a break from reality.
The people who make it here in the long term are usually people who can take local life for what it is, and don't expect much more or less from it than their native culture.
If they did not work so much I think being Japanese would be pretty cool. I'm working in Hong Kong right now which I assume has a close work culture even if it is not as well known as Japans, and I think the hours here are pretty bad. Working on Saturdays, doing a 9-6 instead of 9-5, bad vacation days. Not my cup of tea personally.
Leisure time is important to me and it is probably one of the reasons why I will leave the United States, so I have little reason to envy Japan.
Outside of Japan, they do not really have anything that the West does not have - unless I am missing something?
How come you say you're gonna leave the US when in fact you're working in HK right now?
I certainly have known a number of people who say they do. Most of them were one of two types of people:
1. Americans who are disillusioned with life in America, or possibly life in the West, particularly the anglosphere as a whole, and go under the assumption than anywhere - anywhere - must be better than here.
2. Anime geeks and Japanophiles who, despite their defenses otherwise, are more driven out of a sense of infatuation with Japanese pop culture (anime, Manga, j-rock, Japanese horor films, the entire Konami/Squaresoft/Capcom back catalogue of video games) or romanticised dreams of disciplined samurai, salty ronin and sexy geishas than an appreciation or understanding of modern Japanese culture.
Few of the couple dozen Westerners I've known who fall under these two groups who manage to get to Japan actually stay there for any meaningful length of time... most of the people I've met who lived there for awhile or permanently resettled there had a much more nuanced opinion of Japanese culture that didn't seem anywhere near as extreme, and much more realistic and open-minded expectations of life there.
Geez, they all need to live in South Africa for at least several years and see how good they have it!
Above all else, Americans care about having a high standard of living for themselves and their families. And very few Americans think that Japan has a higher standard of living than the U.S.
Having said that, a lot of Americans do like Japanese cars, tech products and the idea of high-speed rail. I drive a Lexus myself. I also think America has a lot to learn from Japan (and other countries) about efficient public transportation. Japanese cities have a very low crime rate by American standards and that would certainly be enviable to most Americans as well.
but the culture you are describing sounds like a small american town, not an urban center, or even most suburbs. It's like using a suburb of Changsha or Wakayama to describe Chinese or Japanese society.
But, you can find 200 Chinese cities to be more densely populated than Seattle, for example. And Changsha does have a much more efficient public transportation system than most American cities.
Changsha is only tier 2～3 in China, but how many American cities are more "active" than Changsha, especially at night?
I understand many young Americans do not like suburbs any more. However, most middle class families still choose to live in the suburbs, in the woods or by the lakes.
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